turn the crank, which rotates a vertical gear, connected to a horizontal gear. As that gear turns, it pushes an elastic-loaded lever until it snaps back in place, hitting a swinging boot. This causes the boot to kick over a bucket, sending a marble down a zig-zagging incline which feeds into a chute. This leads the marble to hit a vertical pole, at the top of which is an open hand, palm-up, which is supporting a larger ball. The movement of the pole knocks the ball free to fall through a hole in its platform into a bathtub, and then through a hole in the tub onto one end of a seesaw. This catapults a diver on the other end into a tub which is on the same base as the barbed pole supporting the mouse cage. The movement of the tub shakes the cage free from the top of the pole and allows it to fall thus trapping your mouse.

Chocolate cake is the only way to lure them into a trap but we just had horrid snappy mouse traps and one got its leg caught and, my God, it screamed. It screamed for a long time and I had to jump out of the shower and go and sit in the garden in my towel until one of the boys I was living with came home to finish it off.
Poor little thing.
I have no advice other than...do not get snappy murderous type traps.

Don't think you can live with them - they're unhygenic and can chew through your wires. You need to get rid of them. Keep your kitchen clean and store any cereals, grains and flour in tupperware containers - it can help to flush them out.

If you trap them alive, you're meant to release them over a mile from your house - which obviously just means that they're going to end up in someone else's. Traps are only effective if you've got stupid mice - however much peanut butter of bacon you use, the mouse has to be pretty desperate to wander into a box. If you poison them, you run the risk of them dying in an inaccessible place and the smell awful when they decompose.

In the long run, you have to get your landlord to fill holes and gaps, especialy around pipes - they can squeeze through something the diameter of a pencil.

poison put down by the landlord and humane mousetraps but it was when we got a couple of those electronic sonic doo-das which seemed to do the trick. what you HAVE TO HAVE TO DO though is be super clean. the meeces are after food and stuff lying around, so make sure that and food is kept up high in wall cupboards where they're less likely to get to and don't leave dirty washing up or food waste around. did manage to catch a live one - it had been making a habit of visiting our waste paper bin it seems. but one morning after not putting a fresh bag in (so it was just an empty bin), i found a little mouse peering up at me. it couln'd climb up the plastic sides of said bin. if you do catch them alive, you're supposed to take them at least a mile or two away to release them otherwise they find their nest again. apparently.

we had an absolutely enormous spider under the curtains the other day. James wouldn't get rid of it so i had to go near it to put a glass over it and chuck it out the window :( its legs were almost too long to fit under the glass :'''(

you need a big cleanout. When I had them I made my room so I could see almost my entire floor, and the one bit I couldn't see I could get to by moving a cupboard. Then I got my landlord in with some amazing glue that closed up all the holes in the old fireplace and elsewhere. Then I put down really strong poison. They died, I swept em up with a dustpan and chucked them away. Then I never took food in my room again.

We eventually got rid of them properly with the things you plug into sockets, although this did send them apeshit for 24 hours - they were running round in circles in the middle of the kitchen. It was foul.

that needs blocking. They breed extremely quickly (every six weeks?), so you think you've got rid of one lot and suddenly another lot will appear. Wire wool is the only thing they don't chew through. They had to rip several cupboards out in my place and found lots of tiny little holes tucked away that needed to be filled.

As said above, keep anything edible above cupboard level (that includes rice and pasta, anything not in tupperware). In fact keep everything above cupboard level, because they'll play bouncy bouncy over your crockery with their filthy feet and leave droppings. If you're unlucky (hi), they may still like chewing your MDF on the cupboard backs, waking you up at 4.30am to do so.

In terms of getting rid of them, I hear the council can help.

And for those who said keep cereals and grains etc out of site - erm - well I've had three lots, and the last one bust into and demolished an entire bag of Haribo starmix.

Fucker screamed to high heaven. Had a clean up and haven't seen any evidence of other mice since. Seeing as I live on a busy road with loads of restaurants and take-aways, I doubt they were nesting at mine anyway. There's better treasure to be had elsewhere. Still, fuckers should know to not come near me again.

right, well we've blocked up every hole in sight with sellotaped bits of cardboard and have blocked up under the doors with copies of crime and punishment and the like. getting traps today, and our landlady said she'd get us some better squeaky ultrasound things. hopefully this'll sort 'em.

should snare at least one of them. When you have your victim, skin it, chuck away the innards and wear the fur as kind of a Dolph Lundgren ear necklage homage and also a sly nod to Rambo (the first one) and then whilst still wearing the skin try and ingratiate yourself with the rest of the group, learn their ways, what they get up to when they are not running about your house and if possible take them down from within.

I've caught 4 in the past 5 days, and there's mouseshit on the bench every morning.

I've spent about £25 on traps and bait so far. I'm pretty sure they're coming from our dodgy neighbours, because our place is pretty clean, so it's kind of annoying making all this effort knowing that if they don't get their shit together it's all fairly futile anyway.

the "little nipper" ones are the best and are pretty cheap (~£2-3). Don't bother with poison as they eat it go and hide somewhere warm (which you probably can't get to) then die and you can't get rid of the smell.

Also, peanut butter worked pretty well when we had a problem. Although when we had a guy from the council round he said apparently victoria sponge cake with peanut butter on is the ideal bait.